For the next several weeks, a pout may very well be reason to celebrate, as the current cultural master of that otherwise dour expression, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, rolls out the French luxury house’s collaboration with H&M in advance of its November 5 release.

First announced last spring—virtually eons ago in fashion time—the collection is being released with the fanfare of an Oscar campaign. On Tuesday night, in downtown New York, there was a party and runway show that Rousteing promised at a press conference that morning would be “beyond fashion.” (He delivered on his word; the Backstreet Boys played.) There is the advertising campaign fronted by Kendall Jenner, Jourdan Dunn, and Gigi Hadid, who are not only “It girls” but enlistees in what Rousteing calls his #BalmainArmy—the 1.4 million and counting people who follow the designer’s aspirational Instagram feed of pillow-pout selfies, glossy photos of celebrities in his designs, and off-duty video and photo moments with models (several of which, of late, have been outtakes from the collaboration’s campaign).

And then there was Tuesday’s press conference—the first of two, despite Rousteing’s professed ire for fashion press. In conversation with H&M head of design Ann-Sofie Johansson, the designer wore a wide-brimmed hat, a plunging tank top, and a double-breasted jacket with no lapels, all in the new black (black). He looked impossibly young, not by virtue of the kind of luxurious skincare ritual that keeps skin glowing with youth (though surely Rousteing does that too) but because at 29 years old, he is actually young.

While the Swedish mass retailer has regularly hooked up with high-profile luxury designers—last year it was streetwear savant Alexander Wang, the year before it was bohemian city girl Isabel Marant, and in the long-ago year of 2012 it was Margiela and Marni—the Balmain collaboration feels particularly significant at the moment. Not only do Balmain’s sharply tailored, richly embellished pieces present a technical challenge for clothing production on a scale as mass as H&M, but Rousteing’s Balmain—whose sales have grown 25 percent per year since the designer took the helm four years ago, according to a recent profile in the New Yorker—is a kind of seismic monitor for some tectonic shifts in the fashion industry.

All images by Etienne Tordoir/Getty Images.

First, while much of the fashion press trumpets the ascendancy of gender-neutral or gender-ambivalent dressing, Rousteing’s designs are aggressively sexy: bold shoulders, wasp-like waistlines, hemlines up to there. (H&M’s Johansson joked at the press conference about fighting with Rousteing to get the hemlines “just a centimeter longer.”) In addition to Kendall Jenner’s presence in the H&M campaign, the designer line is already a favorite of the Kardashian clan, with Kim sporting its super-fitted looks even throughout her pregnancy. The more cerebral brains of the fashion industry may be saying one thing, but the mass fashion audience and the celebrities that serve as its totems are proving another.

Second, the collaboration marks perhaps the closest H&M has come with these capsule collections to matching its customer to the collaborator’s audience. Rousteing suggested on Tuesday that he doesn’t expect the line to introduce a new audience to the brand, but rather to the experience of actually owning it. In other words: close Kardashian watchers know damn well what Balmain is all about, but this may present their first chance to feel what Balmain is all about (welcome to the sheer physical burden of wearing all sequins!). In promoting the collection, the designer and retailer have expanded the #BalmainArmy to the #BalmainNation, to include, Rousteing said, a larger, more diverse crowd. He spoke frankly and matter-of-factly about the reality that his Instagram followers can’t afford his main line. The credo may be aspirational, but Rousteing himself is pragmatic.

Rousteing’s prominence on social media and pop-cultural platforms means he already reaches a mass audience. It’s another version on the strain of populist exclusivity that, like Givenchy’s decision to plunk its show down in New York from the loftier environs of Paris and offer tickets to 2,000 members of the non-fashion public this year, seems increasingly prevalent in fashion. Rousteing even told Women’s Wear Daily that the partnership had made him more determined to lower Balmain’s prices, suggesting that the fashion industry may be catching up with how its output is being digested. That’s nothing to pout about.

Scenes From the Balmain x H&M Party

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Courtesy of Neil Rasmus/BFA.com.

Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Jourdan Dunn

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